By Scott Gilfoid: Andre Ward doesn’t agree that Carl Froch should go straight from a loss against him into an important fight against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. Ward thinks Froch needs a tune-up before taking that kind of fight, and I agree. I think Froch will pull a major dumb move if he goes from a loss to Ward straight into a fight against a hit and run fighter like Bute.
Froch needs some kind of tune-up opponent with a similar style as Bute to get him ready for the chasing that he’ll have to do in that fight.
Ward said this to eastsideboxing.com’s On the Ropes Boxing Radio: “Personally, I think Froch [needs] to take a tune-up fight or a lesser fight to kind of regroup, but that’s up to his team and after that I think he should go after Lucian Bute.”
I think Ward hit it right on the head with this advice. I’ve been thinking the exact same thing about Froch. He’s just been through a series of withering fights in the Super Six tournament, and now he wants to go straight from a loss to Ward into a fight against Bute. That tells me that Froch is greatly underestimating Bute and not seeing that he needs a rest and a confidence booster before facing a runner like Bute.
You notice how eager Bute is to make the Froch fight right now? Of course he is because he knows Froch has been through a series of fights that has depleted him to a certain extent and the Ward loss has taken some of Froch’s confidence away. This wasn’t a case where Froch could deny the loss like in his fights against Andre Dirrell and Mikkel Kessler. Ward beat Froch so bad there was no question who the winner was in that fight.
Froch really needs to listen to Ward and take a tune-up or two before facing Bute. If he’s worried that Bute won’t be there when he directs his attention to him, then he needs to relax and recognize that Bute has no one to fight other than Kessler, Froch, Ward and 47-year-old Bernard Hopkins.
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